Bringing the business to class

Friday

Normally, Iowa State University students in the Strategic Management 478 class look at case studies in their textbook.

Normally, Iowa State University students in the Strategic Management 478 class look at case studies in their textbook.

They analyze products, take into account profit margins and costs, and present their ideas and plans to the class.

But last week, their professor, Bill Malone, did something a little different. Malone, who also owns Cafe Diem on Main Street in Ames, was looking to roll out a new product at his coffee shop, vegetable juice drinks. He’ll have smoothies mixed with vegetables and fruit, too. So, instead of building a lesson around a case study in the textbook, he decided to use a real-life example.

Malone chose to use the Cafe Diem study in class for two reasons: One, to give his students a chance to do an assignment based on a real-life situation. Two, he got to use his students as a small focus group to see what the college community thinks about the drinks.

Tyler Bro, 22, a senior in accounting, said the students analyze a case study and present the “organizational goal, strategic goal, guiding policies, keys to success and course of action.”

For the Cafe Diem study, Malone brought in samples of the products he was going to introduce and told students about the costs. Students then analyzed them, determined profit margins, and presented their ideas and plans in class.

“It’s nice not to just learn something out of a textbook,” Bro said. “It’s nice to apply that, and apply it to a real-life situation once in awhile.”

Leah Houg, 23, a senior in management and environmental studies, agreed. She said the case studies they usually use are more abstract, and it was fun to be able to work on something where they got to taste the product, and on something that was happening in Ames.

“It makes things a little bit more real,” Houg said.

Ashlee Nagle, 22, senior in business management, was traveling Thursday and responded to questions via email. She echoed her classmates’ feelings about the assignment.

“It gave me a better understanding of how the case studies we have been doing in class apply to real life,” she wrote.

In the end, she also felt like she learned more from seeing everything up close.

“The other cases felt more like we were just going through the motions, but this one definitely required more thought and made us think through the entire process,” she said.

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